Stitching It Together

San Jose textile artist Consuelo Underwood kicks off

spring lecture series Feb. 25

 

For thousands of years, women around the world have expressed their personal histories, societal values, and individual eccentricities in the art of fabric. This tradition now informs the work of many contemporary fine artists including weaver Consuelo Underwood, who constructs the history of indigenous and non-indigenous conflicts through her woven works.

Underwood will kick off the spring semester's Visiting Artist Series at California State University, Monterey Bay when she presents a lecture and slide show on her work Feb. 25. The free event is open to the public.

 “With beauty, grace and traditional form, my work expresses the quiet rage that has permeated indigenous peoples of the Americas for over 500 years,” she says. “I think of my work as woven ‘corridos,’ songs about political and physical strife.”

 

She uses textiles to express personal ideas the same way that a painter or sculptor might, by combining traditional textile materials with those not commonly used – barbed wire or safety pins, for example. Her art contrasts overt political messages with elegant technique.

The Visiting Artist Series will continue with filmmaker Lourdes Portillo’s presentation of her award-winning documentary ‘Senorita  Extraviada’ on March 10. Lowery Sims, director of the Studio Museum in Harlem and former curator of 20^th century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is scheduled to visit campus in early May.

WHAT: Lecture/slide show by Consuelo Jimenez Underwood

WHEN: Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004

TIME: 6:30 p.m.

WHERE: Music Hall, Building 30

ADMISSION: Free

PARKING: Must pay $1.50 parking fee (quarters required)

INFORMATION: 582-3005